


Style

by MrProphet



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 03:29:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10688853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet
Summary: Star Wars is the property of Lucasfilms.





	Style

The Force is everywhere, permeating everything and tying the universe together, generated and detectable by all living things. It ebbs and flows, swirls in currents and pools in still places. It builds up and then flows back, like waves on the ocean, and its movement can carry you forward if you can follow it, or push you back if you try to fight it.

A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defence, never for attack. A Jedi is guided by the Force, feeling its course, following its flow instead of trying to to control it. In theory, there is a perfect flow to everything in the world, an ideal path that the skilled and sensitive Jedi can follow in order to attain victory with barely an effort. A gifted ocean rower can travel with the current and outrun the waves; a Jedi can move through the most appalling battle, untouched.

You have to have a map of the field in your mind, at a level below that of consciousness, and constantly update it; you have to know, without thinking about it, where everything and everyone on that field is and what they are doing. You have to know where they are _going_ to be a second or more before they go there.

There is a perfect flow, a perfect style. The Jedi who attains that flow can not be touched.

I have trained for half a century, the Force my ally and my guide, without finding that flow. I have trained in every existing style of lightsabre combat, honed my senses and my reflexes, and still something sticks; something catches. The flow eludes me. Enough enemies and something slips through, breaks my rhythm and that's it; all over.

When my platoon turns on me, I know that there are too many. Whatever the reason for this betrayal, it's been well-planned. They spread us thin; one Jedi with a platoon or a company is just enough to hone their efficiency, and just enough to make sure they can take us.

Still, I'm not about to make it easy for them, so I move, lightsabre swinging, as the shooting starts. There is an opening in the line, but I ignore it; it's a trap, a dead end. Instead I move into space, making them switch their aim, breaking the firing line, and I make my own gap.

I move through the fight; I know where everyone is and where they are going to be. I strike them down, with the blade, with their own blaster shots, and I keep moving. Where they shoot, I am not. Sooner or later, something will go wrong... and yet it doesn't.

For a moment, I almost don't notice that the fight is over. I am untouched and the platoon are all dead. I feel sick at the sight of them - my friends and comrades, dead at my hands - but there is a strange calm in my heart.

From the left I hear the clatter of approaching droids, and from the right another platoon, their Jedi liaison already dead.

I lift my lightsabre to a hanging guard and I wait.

The Jedi code teaches us compassion, and I feel sorry for my enemies. There are hundreds of them and one of me, but I have found the flow; the perfect style.

**Author's Note:**

> Star Wars is the property of Lucasfilms.


End file.
